PAUL CÉZANNE: “Mount Sainte-Victoire view from Lauves”, 1904-06 - oil on canvas, 60- 72 cm. - Basel, Kunstmuseum

“Cézanne was my sole and only one teacher (…) He was the mother of all of us”, affirmed Picasso talking about Paul Cézanne, one of the most innovating artists of the Art history, and arguably the main creator of the modern painting. Although his name is often associated with the impressionism, his works go beyond any impressionist achievement, and connect with many pictorial vanguards of the beginnings of the 20 th century.

This is one of the most developed versions of the numerous views that Paul Cézanne painted of the Mount Sainte-Victoire in the outskirts of Aix-en-ProvenceWe can say about this work that this is “cubist before the cubism”: the triangular mountain and the prairie elements -geographic or edificatory- acquire volume thanks not to the perspective, but to the superposition of chromatic planes. Unlike in other paintings of the same mountain, Cézanne has introduced vegetal elements in front of the observer, delimiting and emphasizing the view of the mountain and the prairie.